The prestigious and competitive ACE is designed to recognize the important role that U.S. businesses play in advancing good corporate governance and democratic principles worldwide. The award honors exemplary business practices, corporate responsibility and innovation in a company’s overseas operations.

People-to-people diplomacy is playing an important role in international relations in the contemporary global world, adding a new dimension to international relations and redefining the way a country engages with its citizens to garner support for its foreign policy and national interests.

The Nobel Peace Prize panel on Thursday defended its award to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo as based on "universal values," rejecting Beijing's accusation that it is trying force Western ideas on China.

The attempt by a group of patriotic Chinese scholars to create a Chinese alternative to the Nobel Prize appears to have backfired disastrously today, with the recipient a no-show and the Chinese government distancing itself from their efforts.

Embattled Russian civil society activists were full of rare praise for Microsoft today, which has stepped in to protect nongovernmental groups (NGOs) and independent journalists who experience official harassment.

There’s still considerable anxiety that the North, determined not to lose the three-quarters of the country’s oil that lies in the South, will find one means or another to block the vote or deny its legitimacy — and that the result will be the world’s worst war in 2011. That’s where George Clooney comes in.

In the northern reaches of Somalia and the country's presidential palace, a well-equipped military force is being created, funded by a mysterious donor nation that is also paying for the services of a former CIA officer and a senior ex-U.S. diplomat. The Associated Press has determined through telephone and e-mail interviews with three insiders that training for an anti-piracy force of up to 1,050 men has already begun in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia that is believed to hold reserves of oil and gas.

Madonna, always the tough girl, did not let the news of drug-fueled beheadings and butchering in Mexico scare her off. The pop queen inaugurated her Hard Candy Fitness gym in a posh Mexico City neighborhood on Monday night, with Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard in the crowd.